Strategies For Making Organizational Change Stick And Building A Bright Future

According to McKinsey&Company research, 70% of organizational transformation efforts fail or fall significantly short of fulfilling their change vision. And while most fail in the early stages due to lack of leadership alignment, a culture that isn’t aligned with the new strategy and under-communicating the mission plan, some make significant progress only to see those positive changes fade away. They can’t seem to make them stick.

In many of my writings, I dive deep into the theories, methodologies and organizational practices that leaders and managers need to drive lasting change. I have combined key learnings from my own experiences as a business leader with research and stories from other great organizations. The bottom line is that mastering the art of leading change and culture transformation is a reality for all twenty-first century organizations that will thrive, beat the competition and adapt to our new market realities.

I was having a conversation about the concept of communicating a lasting change vision with a friend who works at a San Francisco–based startup called Anaplan— a cloud-based planning and performance management platform for finance, sales, supply chain, marketing, IT and HR. Basically, they provide organizations with a platform that helps connect data in every part of the business to make informed decisions in key areas.

He also happens to be a former Navy helicopter pilot who has done multiple tours of duty. Being a former Navy SEAL myself, we naturally got into the subject of how military philosophies can apply in a civilian business context.

“What are the top three or four things you feel the military does very well that business leaders and their organizations can learn from?” I asked him.

He didn’t hesitate.

“I could sum it up to three key areas. The first is the military’s relentless focus on training, readiness and preparedness for change. The next is its ability to compartmentalize and stay focused on the short and long term mission. And third is the military’s communication strategies leading up to any kind of transformation. Military leaders trust their people with valuable information and empower them to use that information to make decisions and lead change throughout the ranks.”

Next, I asked him about how he would use those principles to improve communication across a civilian organization. His answer provides a great guidance for how fast-growing, high-performance organizations can get it right.

He believes that the primary challenges at hyper-growth companies come from talent acquisition bottlenecks. To keep pace with organic growth, the hiring process can become strained; fast-growing companies can’t adopt a “hire slow” approach, but finding the right talent has to be carefully done, and adjustments to the team and the process need to be made as you go.

“Letting a new hire go is not something that should be taken lightly, because there is a person with a career and a family behind every decision,” he said. “But I personally think, and my military experience bears out, that moving fast to correct a bad hire is important—particularly when you’re talking about people who will lead teams.”

He pointed out that leaders have the greatest impact on an organization’s culture, and their behavior has huge implications. If you hire an individual contributor whose behavior is inappropriate or incorrect, the team leader and organizational culture combined have a good chance to successfully remediate or correct that behavior. But if you hire the wrong team leader, the adverse impact of that person on an organization’s culture can spread frighteningly fast.

So he believes it’s important to acknowledge issues quickly and move to correct them.

To protect the culture in an organization that’s going through rapid growth, he believes in five basic communication strategies.

1. Constant check-ins and communication using a variety of formal and informal methods. Communicating the good with the bad.

2. Leadership meetings focus on getting and staying aligned and disseminating information from those meetings to the right people quickly.

3. Extreme transparency on the direction of the company and the “why” behind that vision.

4. Continually building upon and communicating the vision of where the company is currently and where it needs to go – and the importance of everyone’s involvement.

5. Identifying and celebrating quick wins along with the big milestones.

My last question was what I thought was the most important one.

How do you make the changes stick?

“Tracking progress and measuring for effectiveness is one of the most important pieces of making sure progress towards a shared vision continues at the pace you want,” he said. “By my experience, companies can use several systems for that—including surveys and analysis of predetermined key performance indicators. Some use new technologies for internal communication, and regularly look in the rear view mirror to remind themselves of what success was supposed to look like and to determine if course correction is needed. You must measure projected versus actual progress and activate reward mechanisms that match the desired new behaviors. And most importantly, it’s my opinion that companies should continually remove hierarchies and horizontal silos that can organically emerge to stay nimble.”

He believes that, when an organization creates trust through open communication—and by being willing to empower team members to both receive important information and act on it—it creates a truly collaborative, communicative environment – an organization poised for leading lasting change. A fully engaged team of warriors aligned behind a singular mission narrative. To win.

And I agree.

I am a passionate and globally recognized motivational leadership speaker, entrepreneur, Navy SEAL combat veteran, and currently the founder of TakingPoint Leadership. I am the author of TakingPoint: A Navy SEAL's 10 Fail-Safe Principles for Leading Through Change - an accla...